Osama, Obama, and the Media

On the eve of the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama was being criticized by his base as “leading from behind.” In a matter of hours, the president went from being an ineffectual leader to being roundly called “courageous” for authorizing a military operation on which no modern president would have demurred.

In his announcement to the nation of bin Laden’s death, President Obama made it appear that killing or capturing Osama bin Laden had been a top priority of his administration since day one, and he choose to remind us how bin Laden had, under the previous administration, escaped over the Afghan border into Pakistan. Not once did the president acknowledge that the previous administration had put into place a counter-terrorism team to hunt down bin Laden.

Ever sensitive to the 2012 campaign, the media jumped on the killing of bin Laden with the words “game changer” to describe Obama’s “courageous” decision and his transformation from being indecisive to being a leader. It began to sound like Obama himself had jumped out of a helicopter with an M-16 and charged into bin Laden’s fortified compound.

The problem is that a sycophantic media that was so consumed with seeing the ascension of Obama to the presidency never wanted to find out who he is. Obama, unlike other candidates, was permitted to craft his own image. And much of this came from his veneration of self as portrayed in two hagiographies possessing all the objectivity of a medieval church tome on the saints.

In the past several weeks, the consequences of the media’s purposeful apathy have come home to roost. On April 19, 2011, there was the sight of the president giving a tongue lashing to a Houston reporter who wasn’t buying into playing Larry King to the president. Admonishing the reporter to let him finish his answers next time, as if there would be one, our calm, collected, dispassionate, and open president was miffed because he was forced into playing hardball, a game from which the media had largely exempted him. Anyone who watched the interview knew that the president had been permitted to answer the questions. He just didn’t like what he was being asked.

Then came the president’s April 20 trip to San Francisco. The pool of reporters was restricted to pad and pencil types. No cameras, no recording equipment. Among the assembled reporters was Carla Marinucci, from the liberal San Francisco Chronicle.

Marinucci used her cell phone to captured a protest at the upscale-breakfast fundraiser at San Francisco’s posh St. Regis Hotel. Local activist Naomi Pitcairn shelled out $76,000 so she and her outraged fellow progressives could spontaneously serenade the president with a ditty on behalf of Private Bradley Manning, the alleged Wikileaks source.

After filing her pool report, Marinucci uploaded a video to the Chronicle’s web site, SFGate.com, of the a capella serenade, capturing an unflattering image of a stunned president incurring the wrath of his ideological base.

The White House Press Office issued a heated warning that Marinucci would no longer be permitted to cover the president and if the Chronicle’s editors went public with this story, they and their parent Hearst-chain reporters would be banished from all presidential coverage.

Even for the Obama-allied Chronicle, this heavy-handed outburst was too much. Phil Bronstein, the Chronicle’s editor, posted the story on SFGate.com, and the White House communications office immediately issued a denial, which Bronstein followed up by unflinchingly calling them a bunch of liars.

Such heavy handedness ensues from the continued expectation that the hands-off media approach to Obama is now the norm. This implicit policy dramatically characterized coverage of Obama during the 2008 campaign.

Obama’s ties to Tony Rezko, the Chicago Combine, and various pay-to-play schemes in securing medical facility permits escaped the notice of investigative journalists. When Obama responded to a question from Diane Sawyer about his relationship with then-accused (and subsequently convicted) felon Rezko, saying he barely knew the man who contributed $250,000 to his three campaigns, there was no dogged pursuit of an obvious lie. Obama’s acquisition of his Hyde Park mansion, thanks to the largess of Mrs. Rezko, would, by itself, have been a major scandal for any other candidate.

In 1972, Robert Boyd and Clark Hoyt relentlessly pursued the story of vice presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton’s mental illness, which led to Eagleton’s withdrawal from the McGovern campaign. Boyd and Hoyt had a scoop, but their patriotic sensibilities exceeded their need for adulation. They brought their story to McGovern before they made it public, and when they brought it to the campaign, everyone else got it. Their Pulitzer Prize (1973) was for a story initially withheld but strongly pursued.

How different the media’s approach to Obama has been. Even the issue of Obama’s mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose hatred of America should easily have been a major story, was largely ignored until the ever-garrulous Wright kept pushing the rhetorical envelope of rage and forced the issue.

Journalist Stanley Kurtz pursued the relationship between Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers. When Kurtz asked for the University of Illinois’ records of the Chicago Annenberg committee on which both Ayers and Barack Obama worked, the university, a public institution, denied Kurtz access to public records. This should have outraged the media, but the story gained no traction.

Kurtz learned that not only did Obama and Ayers work closely on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but they also worked together on other committees. Obama launched his campaign for the Illinois Senate in the living room of Ayers and wife Bernadine Dohrn. Still, the relationship between the Democratic candidate for the presidency and two unrepentant terrorists was not considered news. Obama’s dismissive comment that Ayers was “just a guy from the neighborhood” whom he barely knew was accepted at face value.

What appears to have breached the levee the media so carefully constructed around the Obama myth was Obama’s vacillation in protecting the insurgents in Libya. The right to protect, R2P, of which foreign policy advisor Samantha Power is a major proponent, has become a cause celebre for the left.

While still salivating over the prospect of bringing President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney to The Hague on war crimes charges, the hypocritical left has no problem with Obama launching missiles into Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound. Starting a third Middle East war where America’s national security interests conspicuously evade definition does not seem to be a problem, even for those who once embraced the now near-defunct anti-war movement.

“Leading from behind” became the mocking refrain of the left intelligentsia. Suddenly, Obama was no longer the strong competent leader, the messiah who would usher in a new age of diplomacy, but a hesitant politician who yielded command and control causing the flowering Arab spring to wilt.

The media now found it had an indecisive, petulant, thin-skinned, anti-hero on their hands.They argued that this is a different Barack Obama. This is not the Barack Obama of 2008. Then, just as quickly as they had scorned Obama, the media rediscovered their messiah in the aftermath of the execution of Osama bin Laden.

One wonders how they could possibly know who Obama is. In 2008, they reified Obama through his own abstract and deceptive presentation of self. Subsequently they have gone from scorning him to re-embracing him. Throughout, they have abrogated their journalistic responsibility and have caused an appropriate loss of confidence in their profession.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

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1.
Fred Furlong

The four spiritual laws
1. Barack Hussein Obama has a wonderful plan for your life
2. By doubting BHO at any time you have separated yourself from him and you will be judged by the piggod Allah and his catamite Mohammad.
3. Barack Hussein Obama has provided the solution to all your problems.
4. You must accept Barack Hussein Obama as your personal lord and saviour.

Everything about the Affirmative Action Anchor baby Kid the son of a Black Polygamist Undesirable Alien and an underage Trollop is contradictory. He ordered an assassination on Usama but he can’t say it. He put us on a path to socialized medicine, but he can’t admit it. The stimulus bill was a slush fund for public sector unions,but he can’t admit it. EPA regulations are back door cap and tax, but he can’t admit it.
He’s a card-carrying member of the radical left, but he can’t admit it. He has a leftist-inspired prejudice against the private sector, but he can’t admit it. Bill Ayers was his good friend, but he can’t admit it. He listened to every word in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years,but he can’t admit it. He has a real problem with Israel, but he can’t admit it. That is why Obama has so many lame, phony, nonsensical versions of answers to simple questions: Because he can’t admit what’s really going on. He has to hide who he is and what he’s doing.
He has to hide who he is and what he’s doing — and still proclaim he is “the most transparent president ever.” He has to hide who he is and what he’s doing, and that truth — that undeniable truth — is on display every day.
Why is that well his PC moonbat supporters just couldn’t stomach the fact that their Messiah could be so cold blooded to kill an unarmed man no matter who he was and the Obama opposition would be given too much ammunition if all the other facts were admitted. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Here are just “some” of Obambi and his Regimes flip/flops on Usama.
1) There was a firefight.
2) There was no firefight.
3) Bin Laden was “resisting.”
4) Bin Laden wasn’t armed. (Makes the concept of “resisting” interesting.)
5) He used his wife as a shield.
6) His wife was killed too.
7) He didn’t use his wife as a shield. She ran at a SEAL who shot her in the leg, but she’s fine.
8 ) Some other woman — the maid? — was used as a shield. By somebody. Downstairs.
9) That other woman — downstairs — was killed.
10) Maybe not. She was killed unless she wasn’t — and who was she, anyway?
11) Bin Laden’s son was killed.
12) Unless it was some other guy.
13) Bin Laden’s daughter saw him get killed. She’s undoubtedly traumatized, poor dear.
14) They were going to capture Bin Laden until the problem with the helicopter, which was:
A) It had mechanical trouble
cool smiley It did a hard landing
C) It crashed
D) It clipped a wall with a tail rotor, effectively a crash
15.) They were never going to try to capture him; it was always a kill mission.
16.) No, it wasn’t.
17) The chopper blew up.
18) The SEALs blew it up.
19.) Panetta said yesterday the world needed proof and the photo would be released.
20.) Obama said today in an interview he taped with Steve Kroft for “60 Minutes” to be broadcast Sunday that it won’t be released. It’s too gruesome, would offend Muslim sensibilities , and how would Americans feel if Muslims released pictures of dead Americans?
21.) Kroft pointed out that ever since “Black Hawk Down” days, Muslims have been doing precisely that, filming American bodies being dragged through the streets, filming Daniel Pearl’s head being cut off, filming any and everything.
22) Obama gets pissed at CBS, the tape gets cleaned up, that question disappears. (Inside info.)
23.) We got a “treasure trove” of stuff from hard drives, etc.
24.) There were no phone lines, and no internet access at the “mansion,” they didn’t even have TV — what “treasure trove?”
25.) There is obviously in the pictures of the place a large satellite dish. I guess they used it for making salads.

I’m really getting tired of all the main stream media coverage of this. All Obama basically did was approve a mission by the army to kill someone. As far as I can tell, the Military deserves all the credit for implementing and executing this mission, not Obama. Had this mission been a failure, I can assure you the White House would have put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the military, NOT Obama.

Having said that, I also think this media adulation will die down rather quickly. Unemployment is still bad, inflation is up, gas prices are way up, and the economy is as flat as a pancake. I don’t even want to go into what shape the Middle East is in and let’s not forget we’re still invovled in a THIRD war in Libya. So there really isn’t much to be happy about. Always remember that George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings were about 89% right after the First Gulf War victory and he was still voted out of office just a few months later because of a bad economy.

Libertyship I agree with you except about the muckrakers who call themselves journalist, they still worship the chosen one and allways will. even after he is turned out of office,(the sooner the better)he is basking in the glory that rightfully belongs to the military and George W. Bush. but the slime balls who call themselves journalist want so much to give it to obummer,

The same phenomenon used to appease the muslim world is being applied to the Obama situation.
“Maybe if we don’t show photo’s of Bin Laden with half his face blown off, and respect him in death, they’ll be good friends and neighbors, and accept us.”
“Maybe if we treat Obama as an intelligent man, that can control the worlds ills, has acute insight, and emulate him, the black population in America will be good friends and neighbors, and accept us.”
Is it working?

Always remember that George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings were about 89% right after the First Gulf War victory and he was still voted out of office just a few months later because of a bad economy.

The difference between Obama and George H.W. Bush is that Bush was a Republican and therefore was a natural enemy of the MSM while Obama is a Democratic and the darling of the MSM. Maybe I’m just being cynical but I think the MSM – and Obama himself in his re-election campaign – will milk the Bin Laden takedown for all it’s worth from now until Election Day 2012. Obama’s “brilliant leadership” in the Bin Laden takedown will be magnified a thousand times until he singledhandedly planned, organized, and executed the entire operation by himself. Every other shortcoming or failing, past or future, will be brushed under the carpet as if it didn’t happen. Voters will be presented with a clear choice in 2012: vote for Obama, the guy who took down Bin Laden, or vote for some loser from another party whose never done anything nearly as magnificent.

At least that’s how Obama will try to play it. Normally, we might expect the MSM to do its job and prevent this from happening but they are in love with Obama and will surely do everything they can to facilitate it. Ironically, this will accelerate their own death spiral as their credibility shrinks faster and faster. The only question is whether they will succeed in duping the majority of people who get their information solely from the MSM. If they do, Obama gets re-elected. If they don’t, sanity may prevail and someone else may become president.

Don’t underestimate the intellectually bankrupt. Far too many people that I engage in conversation with STILL do not bother to analyze all that is going on. A fellow worker turned to me after the announcement of OBL’s death and said “…are you a believer now?” I fear for the republic. BHO is a lock for 2012. You can’t look at the high gas prices, high food prices, high unemployment, etc. You have to look at how many people are getting something for nothing. I believe I heard on the Mark Levin show this week that 51% of households DO NOT pay federal income tax. Maybe the republic wasn’t meant to last. I say, collapse sooner so the pain isn’t as bad.

Last I heard it was 45% but that may or may not include those getting the tax credits for first time home purchases and/or children in college. Most of them are paying in to Social Security and other payroll taxes. This is as much an acknowledgement of the number of people in the squeezed middle, families with two kids making around 50,000 a year, who are barely making it. Yes, let’s get these people more income. In the mean time, would you like to raise their taxes?

Or is it that these cushy folks making 50,000 and less have it really good, whereas the folks over $250,000, paying 35% are truly oppressed?

Puh-lease. It’s the children card, again!! You sound like Pelosi “it’s for the children”. You ever hear, “Gee, hon, we can’t afford another kid. Let’s wait”? Stop with your liberal implication that everyone has a “right” to at least 2 children per family. And if you can’t afford to send a kid to college? Maybe he should wait. Or apply for assistance. And $50K per year is not slaves wages, especially when paying little or no taxes, and deducting 2 kids. It’s equivalent to $65K and paying regular taxes. $40K after taxes can buy a lot. Then you play the “R” card. “The rich have enough. Let’s redistribute.” Let’s see. Take 10 from the rich, the government keeps 5 and grows and the “disadvantaged” get 5 and grow. In the meantime jobs are lost. That’ll work.

Indeed the MSM are trying their utter creative best to spin The One into a genuine war bird and foreign policy wonk. Take that picture of him cringing in the corner of the situation room. The press said that he had a “steelie gaze.” It is hard not to see that it was not courage that kept his cheeks so tight. How his leftist peacenik base is going to reconcile his license to kill will be theirs to worry. How will the MSM manufactor his credibility for the Arab Spring uprising?
Today, BHO goes to meet Seal Team 6 and look into the faces or real men and patriots. Perhaps he gets to experience again the horrors of his inadequacies. He gets to bleed OBL some more to cover up the 9% unemployment.

Conservative1, other frightening facts other than the majority of U.S. households don’t pay the Fed is:

-Most consider Oprah and ‘Dr. Phil’ to be wise, intelligent and compassionate. If those 2 aren’t Psych 101, sometimes 102 lackeys I don’t know what to tell you. Is there anything more humiliating, as a man, to see men in the audience? Pathetic.

-80% of our nation’s public education institutions are failing (as per the NCLB, which I don’t agree with their ‘one roof/one classroom’ type ‘teaching’) per NEVER BEEN TEACHER – Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

-The concept in having enough money (not credit!) saved for 6 months if dealt a layoff is alien or impossible to most!

-Minorities per EEO/AA in EVERY facet of our society continue to fail miserably in: providing a 2 parent household (73% of Black children are from single parent households..???), getting off the welfare teet/self-sufficiency-upward mobility, lowering STD/HIV numbers, improving (and earning without ‘waivers’) secondary/high school and college graduation, lowering incarceration numbers, having ANY down payment for home ownership etc., all the while the CBC, CHC and other groups want ‘more money’, for throwing your hard earned dollar has apparently ‘helped’ so much in the past.

-Why ‘Humanities’, ‘Philosophy’, ‘Transgender History’ and ~80% of other, ahem ‘degrees’ given away/offered in school is counterproductive. In essence slitting the USA’s throat to compete with up and coming, let’s be honest, surpassing us with China, India, Germany etc., I say privatize an OVERWHELMING majority of the government jobs presently suffocating and continuing their choking of the private industry.

There is NO accountability on the part of frank/Dodd for the housing meltdown, Holder’s incompetence going back to the 90′s, Rangel for further DESTROYING the Black family, area he is knowingly destroying/’representing’.. too many politicians and incidents to cover.

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get [in] back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen! Say Amen! And Amen!”

He’s the President of Black America with a bill for payback. His supporters in the black intelligentsia are a pack of racists. White liberals are mesmerized by race as well. We’re all screwed until Obama leaves and beyond because of immigration.

Obama’s only real accomplishment is Bin Laden’s death using President George W. Bush’s policies he scorned relentlessly in 2008; therefore, the lapdog MSM will try to puff up their hapless, leaderless, egotistical narcissistic man-child into something he’s not: a confident leader.

Already the backfire has begun as Obama tried to heap the rewards into some kind of political momentum, but he was reduced to laying a wreath yesterday instead, as planned, to give a narcissistic speech aggrandizing himself into the firmament.

We still have high unemployment, job stagnation, inflation across the board, & Obama is still weak on foreign policy as well as domestic policy. Bin Laden’s death vindicates President George W. Bush–not Obama.

Once the hpye dies down, Obama’s dead cat bounce of a bump will return to normal as his polls continue to drop since he is campaigning on his Communist green energy crap & Amnesty 2.0. These not winning issues given the current environment. Obama is vulnerable because he has made America’s situation worse. The debt will become a campaign issue into 2012 & Obama cannot run as some kind cost cutting hawk in the context of ObamaCare & Porkulus.

For those who follow recent upheaval, like in Egypt, for example, the media spun a story which is already unraveling. More and more information is coming out and developing that shows the Arab spring in Egypt was not as the media and al Jazeera portrayed.
Amr Moussa, the leading candidate to take power, is a demagogue from the old school. He is riding to power because he is known for his dislike of the peace treaty with Israel. At the same time he is forging relations with Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and even Iran. The usual flacks say that it is all a pose, just to gain power. That’s not the way things work. The pose becomes policy becomes national purpose.

“The media now found it had an indecisive, petulant, thin-skinned, anti-hero on their hands.They argued that this is a different Barack Obama. This is not the Barack Obama of 2008.”

Why, yes he is the same Barack Obama from 2008. We’re merely seeing the true man peeking out through the cracks in his carefully crafted mask.

The list of descriptives above requires one additional word: Facile. He is constantly glib in a way that vaguely insults the listener, as if they are simply too low or mean to understand what he’s going on about, whatever that may be.

Obama’s outstanding talent is mimicry. Absent any semblance of depth, he plays the intellectual to perfection. Absent vision or principle, he plays the statesman. Absent ethics or honesty, he plays the moral teacher. Absent physical courage, he plays the hero.

Obama’s true character is evidenced in his surreptitiously flipping the bird to opponents in public appearances; in his mean-spirited and small-minded denigration of his predecessor; in his inability to admit fault or error; in his sleazy and opportunistic scapegoating of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him or his wasteful, racially redistributive and socialist policies.

Good thing GW Bush turned down the hypocrite-in-chief’s invitation to join him at Ground Zero this week. Obama is all about, and ONLY about, getting votes at any cost and continuing to get a pass from the liberal establishment and the lamestream media for all that is questionable, improper, inappropriate, unpresidential, unconstitutional and disgusting about Obama and his policies. And as much as he criticized, vilified, belittled, blamed, ridiculed and totally disrespected Bush during the ’08 campaign and throughout his first 2 1/2 years in office, he did not hesitate to try to use the gracious and gentlemanly Bush for a perfect photo op to show unity and start his gameplan to garner the conservative, moderate and independent vote for next year’s re-election bid. Glad GW didn’t fall for it.

And, as for those college kids in DC who were out at midnight and beyond to celebrate OBL’s death the night it was announced, we’re not fooled. That was a quick Twitter, Facebook and email from White House operatives to get them to go out and show how much the young adores Obama and appreciative of what they believe he had just done for national security. That was an attempt to play on the young because other young people will be watching TV and, being gullible and wanting to be just as kool as the George Washington University students in DC, they, too, are with it and will support Obama because you see, he CAN get tough with terrorists – of course, not knowing or ever acknowledging that it was the heavily criticized (by the Left and Obama) Bush tactics and policies that should also be credited for enabling Obama to be in the situation where he can make the decision to capture or kill OBL.
OBL.

One of the things the aftermath of bin Laden’s death is showing is the difference between the situational left — who only hate the use of military force and U.S. diplomatic pressure when a Republican is in the White House — and the truly committed left, which hates any U.S. military success, especially in something like the War on Terror.

They’re the ones, like Michael Moore on CNN Thursday night, who are trying to criticize the mission to kill Osama while at the same time trying to figure out how to avoid coming down hard on Obama. On the other hand, most of the big media falls into the former camp, where any qualms they have about how the mission was done are shoved into the closet in order to avoid having to hit the president with the same types of questions they hit Bush with.

It’s hard to see the two sides co-existing very well if the media tries to keep this week’s success in the spotlight on into the summer, fall and even 2012, so for a literal media hog like Moore, he could be faced with the option of shutting up on his complaints about how bin Laden was killed, or face the option of being marginalized by some of his former media allies.

The President may have thought that he would achieve accolades from the right and left when he took the position that he wanted Osama bin Laden’s dead body. Whatever accolades he received were impulsive and ill considered. There are grave moral questions which now confront this country’s leaders and Obama is the first and foremost among them. I call attention to the Reuters photographs showing three dead bodies prostrate on the floor, blood having streamed from their heads. Two are clearly face up. Each discloses a bullet wound at midpoint, just above the chin and below the lower lip. It challenges credulity to believe that these two resisted and were killed in the act of resistance. The identical wound on the face of each raises a question: Were they executed?

No one, that I have run across, has said anything about the fortifications at Bin Ladens compound.
And since we don’t have access to the structure, and can completely investigate, I’d say there were cache’s of weapons and explosives stored in bunkers, and the SEALS had to consider this threat.
If the entire compound was disintegrated in the middle of the night by massive explosions, the U.S. would still get blamed for taking out more terrorists with drones, and our SEALS would have been considered collateral losses.

If a New York trial was good enough for the surviving 911 mastermind currently hanging out in Gitmo, the Holder/Obama policy, certainly a New York trial was good enough for the likes of Osama–or the option of a tribunal at Gitmo that congress forced on the president. But no, there will be no Gitmo tribunal for Osama to affirm American exceptionalism. Instead we get a pre-trial execution of the unarmed. I’m shocked, shocked, at the amoral expediency of our most pragmatic president. If we can’t try ‘em in New York, we won’t take prisoners! At least he had the good sense not to release the death photos in the desperate gesture to show how Americans, specifically from Chicago, prone to endless tribal gang wars and government corruption through community organizing, really are different from the enemy; we don’t take trophies to help celebrate the enemy’s defeat, we build monuments and presidential myths.

There’s a line in “A Man For All Seasons” in which Sir Thomas Moore lectures a person who keeps changing his allegiances: “We must just pray that when your head’s finished turning, your face is to the front again.”

I would pray the same for the media but frankly I don’t want to waste my breath. For too long the only view the media has been accustomed to seeing is that afforded by the narrow dark space inside their own rectums. As a result, their eyesight is unaccustomed to the harsh light of reality, even when the reality of that “Community Organizer” shines right in front of their faces.

It was clear from the start that the O’Bama Administration intended to use this a a campaign tool: one brave act designed to make up for what has been a timid and occasionally cowardly term in office. My guess is that George Bush would have carried out this operation in secret, used the silence to gain intelligence value and attack Al Quaeda, then in a year or so release the information.

You are spot on. You really understand how the Intelligence Community works. This is precisely what a competent administration would do. Good covert ops remain in the dark as long as possible. The administration could have floated the rumor and created plausible denial. No conflict with Pakistan and no conflict with the so called “human rights” community.

There was little political risk to Obama to make the call. I’m elated for the success, but Brennan’s assertions of the bravery of Obama is folly. Rest assured the politics was considered long before the decision was made. Our military and our intelligence are the true heroes. This was not Truman deciding to use nuclear warfare.

The facts are that 40% of this country will vote for Obama again no matter how miserable the economic performance and foreign policy ineptness. 95% of the blacks will again vote for Obama; 65% of Latinos will also cast the Obama vote. Liberals and progressives, whatever their pet name today, will hold their nose and vote Obama – perhaps not with the same passion they did in 2008, but they will vote Obama just the same.

If the mission had failed, Obama’s poll numbers drop a couple of percentage points. But if successful, Obama is deemed a hero – and the media has complied in going so far to announce his strategic genius. His authority is now beyond question.

It is up to us to remind those fickle voters that for the death of one man, the rest of Obama’s term has been an utter failure – both domestic and foreign. And don’t let them forget that.

BHO was pushed into a corner by Panetta, HRC, and the JSOC; not even Jarret could save him from making a decision. The decision was desperate, he didn’t want to commit but felt he had no choice. Now that it was successful BHO takes the credit and the MSM crowns him with an Olympian olive wreath. Above par for the course as usual.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama emphasized clearly that he would remove the troops from Iraq and refocus his attentions on Afghanistan & Pakistan because that is where Osama Bin Laden actually is. During his presidency now, he did that. He also mentioned that if he has Osama Bin Laden in his sights, he would not hesitate to make that call to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. During his presidency now, he did that. Not only did he do it, he chose a surgical strike with the Navy’s SEAL Team Six rather than just dropping missiles on the compound, which was suggested by half of his tactical team who wanted him to drop the missiles. The other half thought he should wait on this and gather more evidence. He waived both of those options and chose to use the “scalpel” with the Navy’s SEAL Team Six that he campaigned in 2008 on in regards to Al Qaida. He risked his entire presidency on this moment and it was a complete success. For people of Pajamas Media and posters in this forum, don’t take this moment away from him because in the end, the facts will still stand in history.

In 2008, Obama loudly claimed that he would close Guantanamo; he hasn’t. He claimed that imprisoned terrorists would be given trials in civilian courts; they haven’t.

He has ordered (or perhaps allowed — can we really say what a cardboard cutout is responsible for?) a lot of drones into Afghanistan and Pakistan. More importantly, he used the information gotten during the Bush administration by “enhanced interrogation” — the very fruit of the poison tree in the view of the oh-so-civilized, oh-so-shocked bien pensants of the Left — as part of the effort of running down bin Laden.

The reason why he has not closed Guantanamo and given imprisoned terrorists trials in civilian’s courts is because there was too much opposition of Republicans in Congress and Americans feared that it would allow the terrorists too much Miranda rights.

In the case of drone strikes in the Afghanistan and Pakistan mountainous region, it started with Bush but he nearly did as many as Obama has done. In one month, Obama issued more strikes than Bush did in his entire presidency. We now know that it has also proven effective. In the last 2 years, we have killed more Al Qaida top officials with the drone strikes than Bush did in his entire presidency. This was the use of the “scalpel” that Obama campaigned on in the 2008 election, the use of surgical strikes to defeat Al Qaida, target Osama Bin Laden and his top officials, rather than sending in hundreds of thousands of troops to Afghanistan to risk their lives, like a “hammer”. This has also proven successful with less of our U.S. casualties.

As far as the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” methods being the key element responsible for this, there is absolutely no proof. Some ex CIA agents that were involved in the interrogations have stepped forward and said that the terrorists never revealed any critical information during those enhanced interrogations. For all the people who believe this, let me ask you all just one simple question – If it did in fact worked, why had Bush not catch Osama Bin Laden during his presidency, with the information attained?

Wow Akatsukami, President Obama never intended to do anything except catch the biggest terrorist in the world, while also playing golf from time to time. I guess he likes to knock two birds with one stone, you could sort of say.

Yes, but Dave, it’s hard to see how he could not have acted. His hand was rather forced by events, and if you think people are a bit skeptical of his being lauded for merely doing what he had to do, imagine the outcry if we found out he could have whacked OBL and decided not to do so.

Even though his hands were forced by the set of circumstances, the facts remain that this president campaigned in the 2008 election that he would remove troops from Iraq and refocus his attentions on Afghanistan and Pakistan because that is where Osama Bin Laden actually is. He campaigned that he would make that shift in focus in order to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. This strategy has now proven effective. Also, it was his decision to use a surgical strike with the Navy’s SEAL Team Six that produced Osama Bin Laden’s body for DNA evidence and facial recognition analysis confirmation.

Can you imagine if we used missiles, as half of his tactical team suggested, knowing what we know now? We would not have produced his body, his other 2 wives and 8 younger children would also have died and the international community would’ve been outraged. Can you imagine if we wait on this to gather more evidence, as his other half of his tactical team suggested, knowing what we know now? Osama Bin Laden would’ve disappeared out of our sights for God knows how many more years to come. Also realized that he put his entire presidency on the line if it failed and a million things could’ve gone wrong, not only with the mission but the backlash from the international community afterwards if it was a disaster.

I need to clarify this – all 3 wives and the 8 younger children living in the compound survived the raid. One of the wives was only shot in the leg but survived. The 3 wives are now held and under interrogations by the Pakistani officials.

Let’s deal with the fat guy first and send him on his repulsive way. Michael Moore made an appearance on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” a show that actually makes Larry King look good, and continued to spout off about Osama’s passing to Allah-Land.

Moore had already characterized bin Laden’s killing as an “execution” and followed up that verdict with Morgan on Thursday by observing that “while he is glad bin Laden is gone, America ‘lost something of [its] soul’ in killing him without putting him on trial.”

He also criticized those who gathered at Ground Zero to exult over Osama’s death: “I hear a lot of people often say, what would Jesus do? I don’t think Jesus would go down to Ground Zero like a lot of people did . . . and have a party” and added that everyone had a right to a trial.

It’s questionable whether the America-hating, self-hating Moore would know a soul from a hole in the wall or be familiar with Jesus and he should be made aware that the Sunday night demonstration was much less a party than it was a reflection of the sentiment that the world had finally been cleansed of a pestilence. Feel free to view Moore’s exchange with Morgan and be one of the few who watch the show here: http://huff.to/iALSy3

Moore was also woefully wrong that everyone is entitled to a trial. According to federal statute 107-40 passed on September 18th, 2001, ”Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists,” the President has the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those determined to have ”planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks or who harbored that enemy.

The joint resolution makes reference to “those acts of treacherous violence . . . which render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad . . . [and authorizes the President] “to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.”

President Obama took action to protect America against terrorism and killed Terrorist Enemy Number One. Nowhere in that statute is there any provision for the right to a trial anymore than an enemy combatant has a right to a trial on the field of battle.

Ironically, Obama, who has denied that a War on Terror even exists, exercised his war powers by taking out OBL. As Rush Limbaugh has said, America didn’t kill Osama, Obama did.

This opportunist we call our president could throw feces in the face of
the lefties and the so called media and they would marvel what a wicked
left he had…..
Never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to walk all over the 3000
or so killed on 9-11 to tally a few votes and feed the minds of those few
incompetent souls who will vote for this moron at any cost…..
After all its for the glory of Obama the mighty warrior-in-Chief who had
to be dragged off the golf course kicking and screaming so his picture
could be taken in the war room along with the other stooges in his circus…

Fow and right-wing radio hold great sway in this country but their alliance with the birthers birthers and bilious hatred of him went too far. Now, that bin Laden has been killed on his watch – he will be very tough to beat. In this regard Limbaugh’s egregious racism and the Israel-first crowd’s attempts to smear him as a Jew-hater will only increase his support among independents hundred fold. Who’s gonna beat him? Romney? Newt? He’s a lock.

“Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Have you actually met him or worked for or with him? Or is your opinion based soley on political propaganda and the BS of the MSM. Remember that freedom is a wolf and a sheep disgussing what to have for dinner while Liberty is guaranteed by a well armed sheep. Spur of the moment feel good actions do not a president make! Must we wait for another 9-11 or worse?